It seems to me that this thread highlights a range of important
questions related to how a scientist should present his work to the
popular press and how the press should process the presentation for
publication (sometimes called the Media Lab Problem). In trying to
frame a few questions, I keep running into this:

Dr. Bowyer says:

>One of the many freedoms that follows from the eschewing of any sort of
ghastly "business model" and just giving something away

>pro bono is that it liberates you from the tyranny of customers and,
worse, investors.

Does anyone want to defend this proposition or can we agree that

- Nothing is free

- There is always an investor

- There is always a customer

I assert that this is important because all our judgments about projects
like this at least implicitly assume some sort of economic context.
Denying the existence of economic constraints gives us no place to
start.